The booklet is typical of most small press work and is decently put together with a functional table of contents and a nice color cover. The cover features gaming miniatures duking it out, specifically a pistol-toting human female about to get ambushed by aliens from two directions. There is no internal art to speak of, and frankly, for $5.50 I don’t really need or expect any.
BUGS! is set in the future with humans and bugs duking it out ala Alien or Starship Troopers to see who survives. Human society is broken down into two types of people: citizens and soldiers. Soldiers have weapons, body armor and are generally pretty skilled at fighting off bugs. Citizens, not so much of these things. Bug society is broken down into size types: Big ‘uns and Little’uns”. The big bugs are nastier than they’re smaller cousins and can dole out more damage. Little bugs are faster but cause less damage and aren’t as hearty.
Each model (including bugs) is considered to be a character and is defined by six statistics. Weapons Skill describes how well someone fights in melee or fires a weapon. Power is a measure of physical strength and relates to damage. Willpower determines just how much a character wants to stay in the fight and also determines who goes first in a turn. Stamina is the amount of damage a model can take. Defensive Armor Value tells how well a character resists damage and Weapon determines how much damage a rifle or an alien’s teeth can inflict on other characters.
The game is based on 2d6 rolls. You roll two d6 and consult the appropriate table for whatever action you want your character to take (shooting, taking a swing at someone in melee or making a check of your guy‘s morale). Reaction checks come into play as things get more tense in the game and damage starts building up . Severe morale failures can be force players into having their characters react in ways that might not be what they wanted. Characters can be forced to run, duck behind cover or even charging into fights they can’t possibly win.
In addition to basic rules, the booklet includes rules for handling varied terrain and “encounters”. Bugs first appear on the table by popping out of holes in the ground that may or may not have been there the last turn. Additionally, the author has added a tremor result that will let the human side know that bugs are about to pop up somewhere the next turn.
Strong Points: Good organization. Simple rules. Use any miniatures that you may already have. Pre-printed sheets (complete with stats) for humans and bugs AND Pre-printed blanks for humans and bugs in case you want to make Ripley or Rico. Morale effects that can have you pulling your hair out if your guys do something you didn’t want them to do at just the wrong moment. The amount of bugs on the table is function of the number of humans. The bugs will almost always outnumber the humans but as long as the humans keep whittling their enemy’s numbers down, they should have a fighting chance.
Points for Improvement: The only beef (and it’s a minor one) with the game is that BUGS! feels more like an RPG than a skirmish war game to me for some reason. While this isn’t a flaw per se, the fact that individual bugs can take more than one damaging hit starts to raise my record-keeping radar a bit. I mean I’d rather have a horde of bugs come at the humans and have their sheer weight of numbers account for individual wounds (1 bug=1wound) to keep the accounting simple. Having to put markers down to denote which Big’un has taken a loss in stamina can get tedious quickly. Again, that’s more a personal preference.
Summary: BUGS! is a good solid little game for people who want to plunk down some minis and go at it. Players can easily ’get into’ this game without having to buy out Games Workshop or some other large miniature company‘s miniatures by using models they already own. Or you could go to the dollar store and buy a bag of plastic soldiers and a bag of plastic bugs OR you could make notes on the backs of poker chips and use them as miniatures OR, well you get the picture : ) The rules are pretty well thought out and could easily be expanded for campaign use if players so desired. All in all, BUGS! is worth the money and a generally fun time.
